Innehållsförteckning för August 2022 från Bass Player

When I was 17 in 1988, I bought my first bass guitar, a $50 Fender Precision copy. It was terrible, and my rudimentary playing was even worse, but in my head, of course, I sounded exactly like Paul McCartney, John Taylor, Geezer Butler, and most of all, Cliff Burton, who had died just a couple of years before. As a teenage Metallica fan, I was intrigued by the unexpectedly melodic nature of Cliff’s playing. Nowadays we know that this was the result of his study of Geddy Lee, Steve Harris, and Johann Sebastian Bach, but back then, all I knew was that he was playing great-sounding lines and fills, often through a barrage of distortion. I gave it my best shot, and several decades later I should really thank my…

THE Lowdown Earlier this year, the prolific musician Cory Wong announced a new instalment of his Cory & The Wongnotes YouTube series—a variety show format he first introduced last year that sees him team up with an all-star house band and an array of guest collaborators. A recent episode is a one-hour-plus bass extravaganza which features Victor Wooten. The 70-minute showcase is front-ended with The Great British Bass Off—a five-minute parody of Britain’s The Great British Bake Off, released ahead of the episode—which in turn is followed by a performance of Wong and Wooten’s new collaborative track, ‘Direct Flyte’. See Wong’s YouTube channel for this slice of baked bass.…

THE Lowdown Recently, the rock world was sent into a frenzy when former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted revealed in an interview with the Palm Beach Post that he had been approached by Alex Van Halen and Joe Satriani to join some kind of Van Halen-related tour. Days later, Satriani confirmed that the idea was real, and that former VH singer David Lee Roth was also involved in discussions for the tour—which Satriani said would be “a true tribute to Eddie [Van Halen] and the Van Halen legacy.” During a recent appearance on The Mitch Lafon and Jeremy White Show, Michael Anthony—who served as Van Halen’s bassist for 30 years, before he was replaced by Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen—confirmed that he, too, had been contacted by Satriani about the tour.…

Understanding chord tones is essential for any bassist, because when you resolve your lines, you’re aiming to land on a chord tone. Many of us understand this concept, but are aware of very few ways to develop the melodic vocabulary needed to create interesting lines. In this lesson, I’m going to show you how to take a minor triad and dissect the melodic possibilities in root position, 1st inversion, and 2nd inversion. The three notes in the minor triad can be arranged six different ways: These different arrangements of the three-note melodies are called permutations. To organize them, if we take the number sequence 1-2-3 and systematically rearrange how these notes appear from 1-2-3 all the way to 3-2-1, we will end up with six different melodic structures to play…

The Classic Interview In the late Fifties and early Sixties, the bass guitar was a simpler, safer beast. You listened to your guitarist and plunked away at your root notes, taking care not to step on the drummer’s toes, of course. That was just the way it was, and that was the way it would always be—that is, until the bass guitar’s role was changed forever by a small group of pioneering players, including Paul McCartney and the late John Entwistle. And, of course, Jack Bruce. Born in Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1943, Bruce brought an acute melodic awareness to the bass guitar from the moment he picked one up. By the time he was 30 he was a veteran of Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, the Graham Bond Organization—an incarnation of…

Behold our world-beating bass gear review section, where we bring you the crop of each month’s new, interesting, or otherwise relevant bass guitars, bass amplifiers, bass cabs, and bass effects. Occasionally we’ll review a guitar effect if it’s useful for bassists, but generally speaking, this zone is reserved for bass-specific gear. We take our reviews seriously. BP is the last English-language print magazine devoted solely to bass in the world, and we have readers all over the planet, so we’re responsible about our conclusions. If a product is worth your time, we’ll say so; if it’s flawed, we’ll make that clear. We’re not answerable to advertisers in any way, and our tests are independent of the views of musicians, manufacturers and distributors. Let us know what you think of our…

THE Lowdown Back in 2019, prog-metal veterans King’s X announced that they planned to record their first album in over a decade. The band—led by the great singer and bassist Doug Pinnick—have now announced that the LP will be released on September 2. “It’s been forever since we put out a new album, and I’m ready for the world to hear our latest offering,” says Pinnick. “There’s a bit of everything that you love about King’s X; three sides of one is the best way to describe it. The groove is with us!”…

THE Lowdown By 1971, the naive optimism of the Sixties was well and truly over. The counterculture was beginning to be subsumed and de-fanged; the hope of Woodstock was destroyed by the violence and death at Altamont. The Vietnam war continued to loom over a fragmenting United States, and even the golden boy Elvis Presley was singing about ghettos, about injustice, and about dreams in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a febrile time, and danger was in the air. Earlier in 1971, Marvin Gaye released one of the most eloquent, heartfelt and powerful albums of all time in What’s Going On. Music was again injected with determined political energy, and Sly & The Family Stone were right in the middle of it. There’s…

Hello, bass players! This time around I’ll be discussing the artistic aspects of writing bass parts in a band, and how these creative decisions can be somewhat influenced by having to play our bass-lines in a live setting. Although this topic is most applicable to bassists who create their own parts, it also applies to those who play covers and who like to add their own reinterpretations of the original lines. From observations of and general discussion with bassists who are new to creating bass-lines, there seems to be an innate desire to create parts that are overly technical and which focus on showcasing individual ability, rather than considering the wider aspects of what being an effective part writer and team member requires. Let’s entertain this approach for a moment…

Few rock bass players have embraced their unique position within a band as well as Def Leppard’s Rick ‘Sav’ Savage. But then again, he’s a lot more than a bass player, contributing to the songs’ often‑grandiose harmonies live on stage, co‑writing many of their biggest tracks and even going as far as tracking some of the guitars—something which bass players are rarely afforded the opportunity to do—over a career spanning four and a half decades. It’s this vantage point that gives him a greater understanding of his instrument’s role in the context of a group, acting almost as the mediator between melody and rhythm. That’s as apparent now, on this year’s twelfth studio album Diamond Star Halos, as it was on 1987’s best‑seller Hysteria. “The bass player is the glue…

"I actually played guitar first, but one day the bass player at my old church had left, so I just went and picked it up and started playing along with the music that was playing in the sanctuary. I fell in love, and have been playing ever since. I picked up the double bass in junior college. Shout to my late mother Romene who inspired me to practice every day. I’m currently playing with a new, all-female band called the Divas Of Jazz.” “My first bass was a blue four-string Ibanez that I bought off a friend in college, shout out to him. My current bass guitar is a white Yamaha TRBX305—I love it because the neck isn’t too wide. I also love that I can go between different tones…

RYAN MADORA Dig into your favorite bass parts... and discover treasure! Ryan Madora is one of Nashville’s most sought-after touring and session bassists. Recent touring and session credits include Robben Ford, Kyshona Armstrong, and her instrumental trio, The Interludes. For the past five years, she has served as musical director for Bobby Bones and has played with Garth Brooks, Darius Rucker, and Carrie Underwood. In addition to instructing at Nashville’s campus of Musician’s Institute, Ryan has taught at Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot Camp, Rock’n’Roll Fantasy Camp, and at universities across the USA. She has contributed columns to No Treble for over a decade and in 2019, published her first book, Bass Players To Know: Learning From The Greats. Ryan offers online education at TrueFire and her website. www.ryanmadora.com Facebook…

Right, last month I got to write the Intermediate column, so just to make things interesting, this month I’m going to continue with the focus on rhythmic groupings that I started there, but we’ll focus on string crossing and repetition today. Using some simpler examples, we’ll think about what opportunities our changes in phrasing can bring for any drummer we’re working with. As we’ve noted before, string crossing is often the point at which ideas that we’ve been developing on a single string can fall apart if we don’t give them enough attention. So let’s give it plenty of attention! Before that, I want to talk a little about what do with exercises, because the fact that a thing is written down makes it feel like it’s the most important…

THE Lowdown Alec John Such, a founding member and former bass player with Bon Jovi, passed away on June 5 at the age of 70. The news was confirmed via a statement posted to Bon Jovi’s official Twitter account. “We are heartbroken to hear the news of the passing of our dear friend Alec John Such,” the statement said. “He was an original. As a founding member of Bon Jovi, Alec was integral to the formation of the band. To be honest, we found our way to each other through him. He was a childhood friend of Tico [Torres, drummer] and brought Richie [Sambora, former guitarist] to see us perform. Alec was always wild and full of life... We’ll miss him dearly.” Born in 1952 in Yonkers, New York, Such…

The acclaimed amp manufacturers Trickfish have announced the arrival of the Bullhead Mini 500, available now with a street price of $799. With a Mike Pope-designed low-noise preamp integrated with a 500W Class D power amp, the US-made unit features a four-band EQ, selectable input sensitivity, pre/post balanced DI out, a Neutrik SpeakON combo connector and a range of other connections. It’s a highly lumbar-friendly product, weighing in at only 3.4 pounds and puts out 500 watts at 4 ohms. Helpfully, it comes with auto-switching AC mains for worldwide use, a feature which we’d like to see on more amps as the live circuit begins to warm up again and a certain level of international touring resumes. In other amplification news, the Polish Taurus company has released a product for…

The invisible films that bond together the pieces of wood which make up our prized instruments perform their unseen occupation as if by magic—but it’s important to recognize that their spells can be broken, if the limits of their particular enchantment are not respected. While the variety of glues and epoxies used in the manufacture of musical instruments are all tasked with keeping wood assembled, the types chosen for specific jobs can be selected for their ability to be disassembled. This is particularly common for adhesives used in the assembly of acoustic instruments. In order to perform regular general maintenance, most acoustic instruments may require partial to full disassembly during their lifetime. Vintage violins, violas, cellos, basses, gambas, and so on that have survived centuries of use—and sometimes neglect—have remained…

You couldn’t pick a less likely spot to celebrate a fallen thrash metal icon than Laganland, a gathering of buildings by a remote country road in rural Sweden. Drive right in, though, and you’ll see a hotel, a petrol station, a hunting store, a moose reserve (really) and now the Cliff Burton Museum, dedicated to the Metallica bassist who lost his life in a nearby coach crash on September 27, 1986. There’s quite a back story here. The memorial stone—installed nearby in 2006, 20 years after the accident—was the initiative of a group of Swedish fans called Cliff In Our Minds, primarily Mattias Ekberg, Tony Asplund, Erik Lysén and Johan Mörling, together with the owners of a nearby pub, Gyllene Rasten. The funds to create the stone were raised privately.…

Guns N’Roses guitarist Slash released a new album, 4, a while back, with his backing band the Conspirators and Myles Kennedy on vocals. Bassist Todd Kerns, a long-time member of Slash’s band, delivers a powerful performance with Gibson and Orange gear, and has a sense of style that would make the devil himself envious. He’s dressed head to toe in black when we meet him, rocking every skull-shaped piece of silver imaginable, but despite this demonic look he’s friendly and softly spoken. “The bass was the first instrument that I related to,” he tells BP. “Of course, I picked up an acoustic guitar as a kid, and my father, in his wisdom, decided ‘Well, you have a guitar—let’s get you on bass’. So we went down to the shop and…

Randy Jackson, born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1956, doesn’t have the usual bass-player biography. A fusion bassist from his twenties, having got his start with the French jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, he found fame with the AOR giants Journey in 1986. This kickstarted a long and prolific session career, whether playing pop hits with artists such as Whitney Houston or complex jazz with Billy Cobham, and he soon expanded his role to production, artist management, and then A&R, where he was a stalwart for many years at Columbia and MCA. That’s a successful music-industry career by anyone’s standards, but Jackson’s appearances as a judge and artist mentor on American Idol on Fox from 2002 until 2014 made him nothing less than a household name. Now that TV talent shows…

The Stave: Most music written for the bass guitar uses the bass clef. The example to the right shows the placement of the notes on the stave. Tablature: This is a graphical representation of the music. Each horizontal line corresponds with a string on the bass guitar, with the lowest line representing the lowest pitched string (E). The numbers represent the frets to be played. Numbers stacked vertically indicate notes that are played together. Where basses with five or six strings are required, the tablature stave will have five or six lines as necessary. PLAYING TECHNIQUES SLAP AND POP TECHNIQUE Notes slapped with the thumb are marked with a ‘t’, notes popped with the fingers marked with a ‘p’. ADVANCED SLAP TECHNIQUE Fretting hand slaps are marked ‘lh’ and double…